Bangaluru racial attack case Former top cop fights for self respect
TSE / New Delhi , Dec 13:
Two days after the incident inside Bangaluru’s Koramangala supermarket on December 9, where Rachel Sangliana alleged she was racially abused and assaulted by local women, in a new twist media reports claimed that CCTV footage showed Rachel was “ the aggressor”.
Rachel Sangliana, about 34 years is a resident of Bangaluru and daughter of HT Sangliana, former Karnataka top cop and former MP from Karnataka. The incident reportedly happened when she was standing in the queue at the cash counter inside the shopping market.
A man and his wife tried to overtake her in the line, which Rachel objected. The couple were speaking in Urdu with racial overtones, which Rachel happens to understand. According to Rachel’s version , the woman, reportedly wearing a burqa, said that “this people behave as if they own the place” and “these people should go back to where they come from/they belong” etc.
After the incident Rachel also told the media that when the woman started pulling her hair and began to physically attacked her she too fought back. Rachel also recalled that other women shoppers too joined her assaulter and they physically assaulted her while the rest just stood, watch and some recorded the whole episode on their mobile phones. Rachel also said that she had heard numerous racial slur being thrown on her.
Two days later, media reports claimed that CCTV footage showed that Rachel Sangliana was “ the aggressor” who started the fight. Reportedly the Koramangala supermarket employees were quoted to have said that Rachel started the argument first, slapped a burqa-clad woman and used provocative language against them, which made them retaliate. According to the employee’s recounts of the sequence of events, Rachel was at the cash counter when one woman dashed against her leg with the trolley. The woman apologized but Rachel abused the burqa clad woman saying “I need not learn lessons from you; go back either to Pakistan or Afghanistan”and that it was at this point that the burqa-clad women retaliated by telling Rachel, “We are Indians, you go to China.” The media reports further claimed that “CCTV footage" clearly shows the entire episode, including Rachel raising her hand and slapping one woman.
Moreover media reports stated that Bangaluru Police asked Rachel to file a case which she was unwilling but rather “shouted at them”.
Initially though Rachel’s father HT Sangliana himself had brushed the incident aside, in the aftermath of the latest development, he told The Sangai Express that a case has been filed at the Adugodu Police Station.
“Additionally, we will also file a case of defamation," he told The Sangai Express “it has now become a matter of self respect," said the retired IPS officer, most popularly known as a super cop, who spoke over the phone diplomatically but appears hurt by the new twist in the story, his underlying tone indicative of a provocation.
He stated that initially the family had wanted that the issue be settled amicably. “We did not want to take up a legal case,” he said maintaining that there could be undesired flaring up of the incident.
On the reports of the CCTV footage, HT Sangliana who himself saw the "footage" said “ there is no record of the said incident,” he said “there is no such scene in the footage I saw at the police station, " Sangliana claimed. "The so called footage record is just an imagination – a makeup story”.
With the case being registered, "now it (the case) is in the hands of the police" said Sangliana.
